The Nigerian cyber space was again hit by cyber-criminals during elections but this time at the time of the Governorship and Houses of Assembles with attacks totaling 3,834,244 from within and outside the country.
According to a report from Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure there were series of hacking attempts were recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and Internet Protocol Spoofing (IPS) attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing.
The report which was issued by the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami stated that the daily breakdown of these attacks are:
1. Friday 17th March, 2023: 1,046,896
2. Saturday 18th March, 2023: 1,481,847
3. Sunday 19th March, 2023: 327,718
4. Monday 20th March, 2023: 977,783
The report, which is the result of cyberspace surveillance activities of the three cybersecurity Centres of the Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) revealed that the activities of cyberthreat actors on the Nigerian cyberspace during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections are much lower than those during the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
Although the report didn’t state if the infrastructure of Independent National Election Commission (INEC) were affected by the cyber-attack, it however observed that Nigeria being Africa’s largest democracy is bound to attract much attention of everyone, including cyberthreat actors.
The Minister assured that the implementation of some recommendations as well as measures taken to fortify the nation’s cyber defence mechanisms might have helped in this.
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